‘Giant among giants’: Lloyd Austin, Fort Worth pastor who faced white mob, dies at 97
The Rev. Lloyd Austin, the retired pastor of St. John Missionary Baptist Church who was on the front lines of desegregation in Fort Worth, died Saturday.
He was 97.
Austin will be remembered widely in Fort Worth for standing his ground when a mob threatened him and his family after they moved into the white section of Riverside in 1956. Those close to him will recall his wisdom and compassion.
“He was a great man,” said his daughter Georgina Austin, his only child.
Austin served as the pastor of St. John Missionary Baptist Church from 1963 to 2005, but pastored at other Fort Worth churches including Paradise Missionary Baptist Church.
He was married to Macie Farrow Austin, a Mosier Valley native, for 68 years. She died in 2012. Austin is survived by three grandchildren, two great grandchildren and four great-great grandchildren, his daughter said.
Fort Worth Councilwoman Gyna Bivens, who represents the Mosier Valley area, called Austin a “legendary figure.” Austin was well regarded among Fort Worth ministers, including her father, she said.
“He was a giant among giants,” Bivens said. “No matter where he was, people flocked to him because he was just a picture of strength and resistance and African-American pride.”
Bivens recalled Austin making a “spectacular entrance” at the dedication of Mosier Valley Park in 2014. Dignitaries were in the middle of making the dedication when a great commotion came over the crowd. She looked around and saw Austin walking up.
“Everyone was just so excited to see him,” she said.
Though Austin became a stalwart in the community, he had little formal education.
Austin, the 21st of 23 children, dropped out of school in the seventh grade to work, according to a short unpublished autobiography he wrote with the help of Bob Ray Sanders. He worked at a warehouse and later as a truck driver before going to Southwestern Theological Seminary at night.
“I might not have finished high school, but I got a good education on life’s problems,” Austin wrote in the autobiography.
Austin faced Fort Worth racism
Austin faced life’s problems head on, including racial tension in Fort Worth.
Born in Hugo, Oklahoma, Austin came to Fort Worth’s Mosier Valley with his family in 1932 when he was 9. Mosier Valley is the oldest African-American community in Tarrant County, first settled by freed slaves in the 1870s.
As a young pastor, Austin was “a pillar of the community” in the Rock Island Bottom neighborhood, said Sarah Walker, former president of the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society.
“He raised us,” she said.
As a young man in the 1950s, Austin had his eye on a home in the 200 block of Judkins Street in Riverside and approached the owner when he saw a for sale sign pop up in the yard. In those days there were two Riversides, Austin wrote in the autobiography. White residents lived north of East First Street while Black residents lived to the south.
When he, his young wife and 1-year-old daughter moved on Sept. 1, 1956, they were the first black family to own a home on the previously all-white block.
“I wasn’t out trying to be a trailblazer, and I certainly was not part of some plot by the NAACP. And, no, I most definitely was not trying to be the Martin Luther King of Fort Worth,” Austin wrote in the autobiography. “We had bought a house that we liked, and could afford, and just wanted to move into it and be left alone.”
White Fort Worthians were not happy.
The day the Austin family moved in there were only hints of what was to happen, he told the Star-Telegram last year. One woman, who Austin described as an alcoholic, stood in front of the newly purchased house, shouting that the white people in the neighborhood should do something about this attempt at integration. The next morning a newspaper reporter knocked on the door and asked Austin if he knew that his neighbors were planning to burn down his house. Things got worse after that, he told the Star-Telegram.
“The whole area was just packed with white folks and as the hours passed, more of them came,” Austin said. “They called me a bunch of ugly names and had signs painted. They hung a dummy from a tree limb in my front yard with a knife in its chest and a red stain that ran down from the knife.”
Austin called the police, who ignored his pleas for help.
The crowd threw rocks at the house, breaking two front windows, according to newspaper reports. They created an effigy of Austin and hung it in a maple tree outside the house, according to his autobiography.
Austin got a .22-caliber rifle and shot out the window, hitting a parked car. That prompted the police to show up and disperse the crowd.
A month later, Austin said he was invited to a meeting with some of Fort Worth’s “rich people” where he was encouraged to move out of the previously all-white neighborhood. He refused and lived there another four years until the state purchased the home in 1960 to make room for a thoroughfare that sliced through the neighborhood.
Austin and the owner of the car he shot, Stephen Shoemaker, met decades later when former Star-Telegram reporter Tim Madigan was writing about racism in Fort Worth. Shoemaker apologized for being a part of the mob and the pair hugged and “parted company laughing,” according to the autobiography.
Sanders, a former Star-Telegram columnist, recalled Austin’s unwillingness to discuss in detail “the bad times” while writing the autobiography.
“He was a humble man and a powerful preacher,” Sanders said. “He had forgiveness in his heart.”
Fort Worth preacher
Georgina Austin said she thought her father would want to be remembered more for his work preaching than anything else. He continued to share the Gospel even as he aged, conducting weekly Bible studies at his nursing home, she said.
He could often be found at funerals for parishioners he knew well, said the Rev. Sean Taylor, the pastor of St. John Missionary Baptist Church.
“I would show up to the hospital and who would be there? Rev. Austin, of course,” Taylor joked.
Austin struck a balance between being firm and inviting, he said.
Taylor couldn’t help but laugh as he recalled meeting Austin for the first time around 2009. At the time, Taylor was fresh out of seminary school and looking for advice from the seasoned Austin, who told him that a preacher is basically a mailman, delivering God’s message.
Austin continued to impart wisdom, he said.
“When you met pastor Austin you walked away feeling like you were somebody because he invested in you,” Taylor said. “He was a beautiful, very warm man, but like I said, he was very straightforward, so you had no doubt where he was coming from.”
Visitation is scheduled from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday from at the Spenser funeral home, 4000 Miller Ave. A funeral service is scheduled for 11 a.m. Monday at Samaria Baptist Church, 4000 E Berry St.
